But it was answered, that it was the constant usage,* that persons nominated and approved, on the same day, to the same grade of office, should take the rank in the order in which they were nominated and approved ; and that surely Mr. Adams would not violate that established rule. So the Senate approved of all the three nominations on the same day.f

For some cause or other-I supposed under the impulse of the irritation occasioned by the negative put by the Senate on his son-in-law Col. Smith, as before related-Mr. Adams very suddenly, and without apprising the heads of departments of his intention, pushed off for Quincy, the place of his residence near Boston; leaving his "incompetent secretaries" at the seat of government, to perform, besides the ordinary executive duties, those arising from the acts of the very important session of Congress just ended. There was at that time no navy department; and the issuing of commissions of letters of marque had been assigned to the department of state. These being prepared, I went to the President's house, by nine in the morning (the day I do not recollect) to obtain his signature; when, to my astonishment, his steward informed me that he had already set off for Quincy. I hastened back to my office, made up a packet of blank commissions, and forwarded them by mail to New-York, to the care of one of his sons then living in that city. There the packet came to the President's hands. He signed the commissions, and returned them to me. But this caused a delay of two or three days, when a number of merchant vessels, in different ports, armed and manned for letters of marque, and ready for sea, were waiting for their commissions.

The Secretary of War made out the commissions for Hamilton first, Pinckney second, and Knox third, major general, and sent them to Quincy, for the Presi

*Grounded on a resolve of the Old Congress, January 4, 1776.

+ Congress had already adjourned; and the senators, impatient to depart, remained in session only to pass on the military nominations. It was then the middle of July.

Such, I remember to have been informed, was the term by which he sometimes designated the heads of departments.

dent's signature. He wrote to the Secretary, that in his opinion Knox was entitled to rank as first major general, Pinckney as the second, and Hamilton as the third; and directed, that if General Washington should concur in that opinion, he should conform the commissions to that order. Possessed of this information, and having already interested myself to secure to Hamilton the first place after the commander in chief, I addressed, on the first of September, a second letter to Washington; in which I examined at large the alleged reasons for giving Knox the precedence, and demonstrated (as I thought) their invalidity. The General

honoured me with his answer, dated the 9th. It was a long letter, in relation to the new army. The following extracts, pointing most directly to the present subject, are all that I need introduce.

"Your private letter of the first instant came duly to hand, and I beg you to be persuaded that no apology will ever be necessary for any confidential communications you may be disposed to entrust me with.

"In every public transaction of my life, my aim has been to do that which appeared to me to be most conducive to its weal. Keeping this object always in view, no local considerations, or private gratifications, incompatible therewith, can ever render information displeasing to me from those in whom I have confidence, and who, I know, have the best opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of facts in matters which may be interesting to our country, and essential for myself as its servant.

"Having troubled you with this exordium and egotism, I do not only thank you for the full and judicious observations relative to the discontents of General Knox, at being appointed junior major general in the augmented corps, but I shall do the same for your further occasional remarks on this, or any other subject which may be interesting and proper for me to know; that I may thereby regulate my own conduct in such a manner as to render it beneficial and acceptable to the community, in matters which depend on correct information not in my power to obtain in the ordinary course, without aid."

The General then mentions his early writing to General Knox, stating the principle upon which the arrangement of the major generals had been made; and that he was not a little surprised to find in his answer an expression of great dissatisfaction at the measure. General Washington replied, in order to conciliate Knox; but in vain.

Before the Secretary of War could have written to and received an answer from General Washington, respecting the order in which the three major generals should take rank, another letter was received from the President, peremptorily requiring him to make out their commissions in the order of Knox, Pinckney, Hamilton. Upon which I again wrote to General Washington. The subsequent decisive proceeding on his part finally induced the President (certainly to his extreme mortification) to recur to the old rule, from which he ought never to have departed; and the commissions were made out according to the General's arrangement. The President's departure from it was a violation of the general condition on which Washington accepted the chief command.

Several motives to this incorrect conduct of President Adams may be assigned. Primarily, his unrelenting hatred of Hamilton; whom, utterly regardless of the public interest in his services, he would have driven from the army, by degrading him from the rank to which his merit and actual appointment entitled him. In the next place, he would have expected from Knox a degree of subserviency to his views which was not to be expected from Hamilton. Lastly, he had received from Knox a flattering letter, expressing his unqualified admiration of the President's measures. And to a man of Mr. Adams's unbounded vanity, nothing could be so grateful, nothing so influential, as flattery. In ⚫ this letter, Knox suggested a variety of measures, and on a liberal scale, which he thought should be taken, effectually to resist and defeat an invasion by the French; and he concluded with a tender of his humble abilities for any sort of service to which they should be thought equal.*

After such an expression of the humble sense of his own abilities, and of his readiness to serve in any station to which they should be deemed adequate, it must surprise every one to find that his humility was offended

* I have a copy of this letter, taken from the original, which, by Mr. Adams's direction, I deposited in the war-office.

because he was not placed above all other officers, Washington only excepted: but such was the fact; and for that reason he refused to serve at all. In a letter to me, General Knox said, "The present view "of the subject is, that Mr. Hamilton's talents have "been estimated upon a scale of comparison so tran"scendent, that all his seniors in rank and years of the "late army have been degraded by his elevation. "Whether this estimate has been perfectly correct, or "whether the consequences will be for the happiness " of the country, time will discover."

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It is the more remarkable that Knox should insist on the first rank as a major general, seeing the arrangement had been made by General Washington, for whom he always manifested the most profound respect; and the General always appeared to me to entertain towards Knox a peculiar and very strong attachment. In a letter to Hamilton, in reference to the arrangement of him and Pinckney, Washington said, "With respect to my friend General Knox, whom I love and esteem, I "have ranked him below you both." If there was in the revolutionary army but one officer whom he loved, Knox was that one. In this case we see exemplified the sentiment expressed to me by the General in his letter of Sept. 9, before quoted-That in every public transaction of his life, the public weal, and not private gratifications, governed him. No person acquainted with Hamilton and Knox could hesitate a moment in deciding to whom the preference was due.

Mr. Adams has been unwearied in his attempts to degrade Hamilton in the eyes of his fellow-citizens: he has been so indiscreet as to deny him, what all the world beside allow him, very eminent talents. According to Mr. Adams, his son-in-law Col. Smith, in the military line, was much superior to Hamilton : And having, in many letters published in the Boston Patriot in 1809, labouring to vindicate the mission to France instituted in 1799, commented on various passages of Hamilton's letter of 1800, when Adams was a second time a candidate for the presidency, he con

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cludes his 16th letter with these words: "I have no "more to say on this great subject. Indeed I am weary of exposing puerilities that would disgrace the "awkwardest boy at college." After this shot, the following comparison of Mr. Gerry and Hamilton, as financiers, will occasion no surprise.

In his 13th letter, dated May 29, 1809, published in the Boston Patriot, Mr. Adams, speaking of his favourite, Gerry, as one of the ministers to negotiate with the French Republic, against whom he supposes prejudices had been entertained, says, "No man had a greater share in propagating and diffusing these pre"judices against Mr. Gerry than Hamilton; whether "he had formerly conceived jealousies against him as a "rival candidate for the Secretaryship of the Treasury for Mr. Gerry was a financier, and had been employed for years on the treasury in the old Congress, and a most indefatigable member too :"" that "committee had laid the foundation for the present system of the treasury, and had organized it almost "as well:"-" I knew that the officers of the treasury, "in Hamilton's time, dreaded to see him rise in the "House upon any question of finance, because they said "he was a man of so much influence, that they always "feared he would discover some error, or carry some "point against them or whether he [Hamilton] fear"ed that Mr. Gerry would be President of the United "States before him, I know not."!!!

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It appears by Cunningham's letters to Mr. Adams, that the latter had written two concerning Hamilton, filled with matters of such a character that he would not leave them in Cunningham's hands: he insisted on their being returned to him, and they were returned: but their contents are intimated in Cunningham's answers. The accusations are of atrocious vices. One, that Hamilton was totally destitute of integrity. The whole of the world where Hamilton was known will acquit him of this charge, and with scorn repel the foul calumny. And every reader of this Review will have seen the licentiousness of Mr. Adams's pen, and how